Myers Still Wants to Abuse Eucharist; Shows Deference to Islam (No Surprise There)

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented on the latest developments to surface regarding the pledge made by Paul Z. Myers, a professor at the University of Minnesota, to desecrate the Eucharist:

“Myers was quoted yesterday saying, ‘I have to do something. I’m not going to just let this disappear.’ [Last Friday it was reported that he had acquired a Host.] He continued, ‘Something will be done. It won’t be gross. It won’t be totally tasteless, but yeah, I’ll do something that shows this cracker has no power.’

“The biology professor made it clear that he would never disrespect Islam the way he does Catholicism. When asked about those who abuse the Koran, for example, he said such an act was analogous to desecrating a graveyard. ‘That’s completely different,’ he said. ‘I don’t favor [that idea].’ But when it comes to the Body of Christ, he opines, ‘The cracker is completely different.’

“This isn’t the first time Myers has shown deference to Islam. For instance, two years ago he was critical of the Danish cartoons that simply depicted an image of Muhammad. ‘They [the cartoons] lack artistic or social or even comedic merit, and are presented as an insult to inflame a poor minority.’ So now the Planet-of-the-Apes biologist has divined himself an expert on the artistic value of cartoons. So thoughtful of him. He even went so far as to say that Muslims ‘have cause to be furious.’ (His italic.) Worthy of burning down churches, pledging to behead Christians and shooting a nun in the back, Professor Myers?

“We hope Myers does the right thing and just moves on without further disgracing himself and his university. The letter I received from University of Minnesota President Robert H. Bruininks makes it clear that school officials want nothing to do with his hate-filled remarks. It would also be nice if Myers’ fans would cease and desist with their hate-filled screeds.”

Not everyone is as enthusiastic as you about Dawkins. See Tom Wolfe's Hooking Up (New York: Picador USA, pp. 83-84):

In 1976, a year after Wilson had lit up the sky with Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, a British zoologist and Darwinian fundamentalist, Richard Dawkins, published a book called The Selfish Gene in which he announced the discovery of memes. Memes were viruses in the form of ideas, slogans, tunes, styles, images, doctrines, anything with sufficient attractiveness or catchiness to infect the brain -- “infect,” like “virus” became part of the subject’s earnest, wannabe-scientific terminology -- after which they operated like genes, passing along what had been naively thought of as the creations of culture.
Dawkins’s memes definitely infected the fundamentalists, in any event. The literature of Memeland began pouring out. Daniel C. Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. William H. Calvin’s How Brains Think, Steven Pinker’s How the Mind Works, Robert Wr8ight’s The Moral Animal, The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore (with a foreword by Richard Dawkins) and on and on. Dawkins has many devout followers precisely because his memes are seen as the missing link in Darwinism as a theory, a theoretical discovery every bit as important as the skull of the Peking man. One of Bill Gates’s epigones at Microsoft, Charles Simonyi, was so impressed with Dawkins and their historic place on the scientific frontier, he endowed a chair at Oxford University titled the Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science and installed Dawkins in it. This makes Dawkins the postmodern equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Dawkins is Archbishop of Darwinian Fundamentalism and Hierophant of the Memes.
There turns out to be one serious problem with memes, however. They don’t exist. A neurophysiologist can use the most powerful and sophisticated brain imaging now available -- and still not find a meme. The Darwinian fundamentalists, like fundamentalists in any area, are ready for such an obvious objection. They will explain that memes operate in a way analogous to genes, i.e., through natural selection and survival of the fittest memes. But in science, unfortunately, “analogous to” just won’t do. The tribal hula is analogous to the waving of a wheat field in the wind before the rain, too. Here the explanatory gap becomes enormous. Even though some of the fundamentalists have scientific credentials, not one even hazards a guess as to how, in physiological, neural terms, the meme “infection” is supposed to take place. . . .

There turns out to be one serious problem with memes, however. They don’t exist?

Ideas don't exist?

Memes are simply ideas stored in the physical structure of the brain according to Dawkins. My concept is broader, but lets stick with his. Acquiring a meme would be learning. It has been proven that learning changes the structure of the brain. Contrary to your selected source, these structures are visible, so "a neurophysiologist can use the most powerful and sophisticated brain imaging now available -- and still not find a meme." is a false statement.

Here is an article on learning changing the physical structure of the brain

http://www.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/ch5.html

...I’ll do something that shows this cracker has no power....

***
Well, gee, if It has no power, why are you making such a big deal about It?

Dear Lord, please, please, I know we frequently ask for well-directd lightning bolts, but this is truly a perfect situation for one.

Monsters like us show us just how much the Evil One is working among us.

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